The deal, which didn’t have a price tag unveiled with it, follows months of speculation about who would land the startup. Reports in recent days said Google was close to a $1.3 billion deal.

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The acquisition could help Google improve its own mapping services and put a bigger moat around them against the likes of Facebook and Apple. According to Google Blog, the Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now and they are working hard on the marriage of Waze with existing Google map on traffic update as well as Google powerful search function.

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In its post about the takeover, Google said it planned to enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with its own search capabilities. The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now.

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Waze leverages a growing community of drivers to find the best routes through traffic. It said joining Google ranks, rather than taking the route of an initial public offering, will keep attention from shifting away from its community of drivers to lawyers and Wall Street.